A Catholic priest responds to queries on faith, the Bible, religion, Catholic practice, etc. posed by readers.
What he doesn't know, he makes up.
A searchable archive of all articles can be found at http://www.rev-know-it-all.com/

Thursday, March 13, 2014

We have lost our minds..

Letter to Mary K. Lastima, the grand finale.

It must seem a little far fetched to you, that somehow the banality with which
the liturgy is celebrated by many officiants, the prevalence of abortion and the
worship of demonic spirits are somehow all tied together. Perhaps I should throw
in space aliens and Bigfoot while I am at it.

I say the Mass of St. Pius V (more commonly called the Tridentine Mass)
regularly. I more often say the Mass of the Venerable Paul VI (commonly called
the Ordinary form of the Novus Ordo. I am not opposed to the Mass of Paul VI. I
actually love it. It is the Mass that I have mostly said all of my priesthood.
My problems are not with the Novus Ordo, so called, but with the outrageous
manipulation of the liturgy for personal or political motives. I think of
liturgies with giant paper mache heads, old women dancing in flowing skirts and
fat men dancing about in tight white pants, or I think of para-liturgies that
feature angels roller skating to circus music. I’m not making this up. You can
look this stuff up at the following sites.

I love the Mass of Paul VI. I remember once reading that the liturgy of the
Latin rite is characterized by its simplicity and dignity. One is reminded of
that old song, “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma.” Paper Mache dancing
heads and fat guys in white pants? Dignity? Simplicity?

Still, I maintain that the simplified Mass of Paul VI offered the way intended
is very beautiful. The way we priests have mangled it has lowered our standard
of the sacred, with horrifying consequences. The Mass as said in many parishes
is a venue for rebellion, not for worship. “For rebellion is as the sin of
witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry.” (1Sam. 15:23) I am regularly asked
why a priest changes the Mass, or uses his own words or leaves part out while he
puts in things that aren’t supposed to be there. It is simple. He is a rebel and
“rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry.” Three
thousand years ago the prophet Samuel saw a connection between the abuse of
liturgy and the demonic. Look it up: First Book of Samuel the 15th
chapter. Saul offered sacrifice which was forbidden to him and for this he lost
the crown and his life, as well as the life of his son, Jonathan.

Have you ever read the Book of Wisdom, also called the Wisdom of Solomon? It’s
one of those extra Catholic books. You would have read, “…through the envy of
the devil came death into the world.” For what, you may ask, is the devil
envious of us? He is immortal; he is immeasurably smarter and more powerful than
we. This, too, is simple: Angels don’t reproduce, and the devils, who are fallen
angels, can only steal our children. God shared something with us that He didn’t
share with the angels. We can create something immortal.

God creates the soul, but a man and a woman in their coming together create the
body, which is immortal, if Christ’s promise of resurrection is true. Humanity
in its art and in its children shares the creativity of God in a way that angels
cannot. Therefore, the devil hates art and beauty, for which the Catholic Mass
and Catholic churches were the principle venue for a thousand years. The devil
has convinced us to swap the amazing music and architecture of Catholicism for
ugly buildings and banal music. The simplicity dignity and beauty of the Latin
rite, both in the new mass and the old, gives way to the spectacle of the
circus. But more than art, the devil hates children. They remind him that “God
so loved the world.” In his diabolical envy, he has contrived to create sterile
art and sterile marriages. Abortion, artificial birth control, rampant divorce,
same sex marriage, on-line and off line pornography. They are the utensils with
which the devil devours children and we feed them to him as surely as our
forbears threw their children into the fires of the demon-god Moloch, all for
the sake of our well being and prosperity.

Why do I lump divorce in with all those other more clearly anti-reproductive
activities? Simple: Children need stable homes in which to flourish. Even
faithful marriages between men and women who cannot themselves have children
strengthen the dignity and reverence in which marriage and the home are held. If
the sacredness of the bond between a man and a woman can be cheapened, then
children may be born, but in their hearts they usually can’t flourish.

The Latin word sacrament means an oath to the
death. We have reduced it to a show, a kind of entertainment, and shamefully
this is not just done at the new Mass, but I have seen Tridentine Masses where
it is all about the show. The degradation of one sacrament, the breaking of one
solemn oath hardens our hearts. We receive the Body and Blood or the Lord
without reverence, without “discerning the body” as St. Paul says, and we
likewise have no trouble breaking the oath that gives life in the flesh after we
have cheapened the oath which gives us life in the spirit. I cannot fathom how
a person can think that the pleasures of what is most certainly an aberrant, use
of our bodies, even if it is pleasurable to some, can be compared to the sacred,
life-giving secret shared by a husband and wife.

I said earlier, the devil hates good art and the devil hates children, He has
tried to teach us that sexual desirability is the ultimate beauty. We go to the
gym, the diet clinic and the plastic surgeon to keep ourselves physically
desirable. All the while we remain morally and spiritually weak and deformed. We
are cheap paintings in expensive frames. We are fifty dollar haircuts on seventy
five cent heads. When we mistake the paint, the hair dye and the varnish for
beauty, we are fools. True beauty lifts us to God. False beauty fixes our eyes
only on our desires. True beauty makes us better. False beauty makes us less.
False beauty ties us up in our own needs and fantasies. It fixes our gaze on the
filth beneath our feet, not on the stars over our heads.

How can what the modern world calls love ever be compared with that love that
brings new life? The disordered desires of the modern marriage movement bring
nothing but passing pleasures that are soon devoured by boredom and regret. I
know three things that are beautiful: a simple Mass, an old couple and a newborn
baby.

A simple Mass simply said, lifts the heart and mind to God. A simple Mass
doesn’t entertain. It brings heaven down to earth and earth to heaven in the
flesh and blood of the Savior made present on the altar.

The charm of a young couple in love cannot be compared to the beauty of an old
man and woman, who after a life of faithfulness walk hand in hand with each
other and call each other by names like “sweetheart,” or “Mama” and “Papa”.

And more beautiful still is that ultimate work of art, fashioned by the Maker of
all things in a woman’s sacred womb: a child. Is there anything more wonderful
than that little bundle of hope that reminds us of God’s great love? We have
trashed the churches and murdered the children, all in the name of progress,
freedom and tolerance.

Rev. Know-it-all

About Me

Rev. Know-it-all is the alter ego of Fr. Richard Simon, Pastor of St. Lambert Parish, Skokie, IL.
Now a regular host of Relevant Radio's "Fr. Simon Says", Fr. Simon spent over 20 years "...teaching dead languages to comatose seminarians."
Credits: The Reverend Know-It-All is a parody of Mr. Know-It-All, the alter ego of Bullwinkle J. Moose, a carton character created by Jay Ward (1920-1989).